History for sale on Sarasota's Cunliff Lane

Tombstone, Ariz., has the O.K. Corral, Chicago has the North Clark Street warehouse of St. Valentine's Day Massacre fame, and Sarasota has Cunliff Lane.

Sure, Cunliff is peaceful now, but 129 years ago it was the scene of one of the most notorious and heinous crimes in Sarasota history.

This property on Cunliff Lane has an old building may have served as one of Sarasota's first post offices. It is now attached to a 1970 house that is for sale at $ 995,000 through Sandra Appignani of Premier Sotheby's International Realty. (Staff photo / Harold Bubil)

It's where, on Dec. 27, 1884, Sarasota's first postmaster, Charles Abbe, was shot in broad daylight with both barrels of a shotgun. The triggerman and his accomplice let a man who was with Abbe run away unharmed, to later testify about the crime.

They dragged the postmaster's bleeding body through the sand and onto a boat, leaving bits of Abbe's brains on the ground, according to the history books.

Then they sailed through Big Pass and threw the body "to the sharks," wrote the Chicago News.

Murders in Sarasota tend to get national and international publicity, and this one was no different.

The New York Times' correspondent wrote of a "Sarasota Assassination Society." According to various accounts, the murder was motivated by politics, real-estate jealousies and business rivalries.

But neither frost nor rain nor buckshot could stop the U.S. Mail. Abbe's wife, Charlotte, took over his duties at the first post office, which Charles Abbe had built in the late 1870s near the present-day intersection of Arlington Street and Osprey Avenue.

Accounts of pioneer history often vary, though. A Sarasota Times article in 1913 reported that the post office was "on the bay near Mr. Cunliff's place." But "on the bay" then could mean "several blocks away" now. In 1886, the post office was moved to what is now downtown, according to historical accounts.

This telegram was sent on Dec. 29, 1884, from Nellie Abbe Whittaker to her uncle, J.N. Adams, in Chicago, after the muder of her father, Postmaster Charles Abbe, two days earlier on Sarasota's Cunliff Lane. In it, Nellie implores her uncle to prevent her sister, Carrie, from making the trip to Sarasota.The murder was attributed to the Sara Sota Vigilance Committee, also known as the Sara Sota Assassination Society. The lawless frontier village was then part of Manatee County. Photo: Manatee County Historical Society. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 3-22-2013.

Right after the killing, Charlotte Abbe, in fear for her own life, took refuge at the F.C. Whitaker homestead north of town for several months, then may have re-opened the post office on Cunliff Lane in a two-story wooden carriage house.

Eric Bowyer believes that structure is what now serves as a garage, storage building and upstairs apartment attached by a breezeway to a 1970 house he owns at 1700 Cunliff Lane. Sandra Appignani of Premier Sotheby's International Realty has the two-thirds-acre property listed for sale at $995,000.

"Technically, it can't be marketed as a historic home, but it certainly has a lot of history behind it," said Appignani.

"It is Ground Zero for Sarasota history," said Bowyer, who inherited the property from its most recent owner, Monique Stella Dallant Cunningham. Her husband, Sam Cunningham, purchased the main house with attached carriage house in 1987. Mr. and Mrs. John Scheb built it.

Bowyer, who lives across the street and grew close to Stella Cunningham by helping maintain her property, was sorting Mr. Cunningham's belongings when he found a letter dated 1969. In it, then-county historian Doris Davis tells the Schebs of a meeting she had in 1963 with former Sarasota Mayor A.B. Edwards. He pointed out the carriage house and told Davis that Charlotte Abbe had set up a post office there in the 1880s, when Edwards was a child and living next door in the Cunliff house.

At that time, the carriage house may have been located on the bay, just north of Cunliff Lane.

"We have made every effort to sustain this location pointed out by the late Mr. Edwards," Davis wrote to the Schebs, "but unfortunately, documents in our archives do not accurately designate the location of the post office at the time Mrs. Abbe was appointed acting postmaster.

"However, I have found Mr. Edwards to be very accurate in his description of Sarasota landmarks."

The location of a wood-frame post office is not as important as, say, whether the Pilgrims actually landed at Plymouth Rock, but it has earned the attention of historians over the years, including Karl Grismer in "The Story of Sarasota," and Janet Snyder Matthews in "Edge of Wilderness."

Bowyer even asked local historian Larry Kelleher to look into the matter. His findings are inconclusive as to whether the carriage house actually served as a post office.

"The stories are a bit contradictory," Kelleher wrote to the Herald-Tribune in an email. "The historical marker placed there (near Osprey Avenue and Cunliff Lane) says it was the first post office. However, when you look at the 1880 geographical survey map, it is clearly shown near today's Osprey Avenue and Arlington Street. Post Office Point was down where Harbor Acres is today. The foot paths lead to Charles Abbe's home, where he had the first post office. He became postmaster in 1878.

"It just seems odd. ... When Abbe was murdered on Cunliff Lane in 1884, his wife, Charlotte, took over the postal duties for two years," Kelleher wrote. "If the post office was moved to the carriage house, why on earth would she want to set up shop on the street where her husband was slain? It seems like she would want to stay in her home."

But counters Bowyer, "Charlotte Abbe may have felt safer at the Cunliff location because Richard Cunliff came to her aid" after her husband was killed.

The motive

Abbe may have been murdered because of business and real-estate rivalries in the lawless frontier settlement. According to "Edge of Wilderness," the society's members resented Abbe because he was not only a Northerner, but also a government agent, progressive businessman, the settlement's largest landowner and worse, a Republican in a mostly Democratic Manatee County, 37 years before Sarasota County was formed.

By one account, detailed in "The Story of Sarasota," Abbe may have been helping land speculators and cattlemen who needed access to the bay to ship their livestock. In their way were homesteaders, referred to by the cattlemen as "squatters." Either way, Abbe ended up dead, his murder planned on Christmas Day at the Alfred Bidwell home.

Fact or lore?

Kelleher noted that Grismer's "The Story of Sarasota" is "not the most accurate book." Indeed, Matthews has said the book contains "myth." Perhaps it should be renamed "Pretty Much the Story of Sarasota."

Kelleher wrote that according to Matthews, "the carriage house being a post office is just lore, and the historical marker is in the wrong place. However, in her book, 'Edge of Wilderness,' I find a contradiction for the location of the post office."

But while the historical accounts vary, the carriage house certainly appears to be old enough to fit the description of 1880s pioneer building.

Said Appignani, the Realtor, "It meant enough to the Schebs, when they had this house designed (in 1970), to keep the post office and attach it by way of a breezeway to the main house."

The breezeway contains part of history-buff Bowyer's collection of Sarasota memorabilia, including an old map, a copy of Charles Abbe's commission as postmaster, decades-old tourism publications and a wooden shelving system that may have been used for the sorting of mail.

"These old slotted boxes, we think, are from the post office days," said Bowyer.

"I would really like to try to find a buyer who will appreciate and save the historic structure, or donate it to a historic park.

"I have been cleaning up and fixing up the property," said Bowyer, "and I have now had to list it for sale as I own another house in the neighborhood."

Harold Bubil

Harold Bubil is real estate editor of the Herald-Tribune Media Group.
Born in Newport, R.I., his family moved to Sarasota in 1958. Harold graduated from Sarasota High School in 1970 and the University of Florida in 1974 with a degree in journalism. For the Herald-Tribune, he writes and edits stories about residential real estate, architecture, green building and local development history. He also is a photographer, videographer and public speaker. Contact him via email, or at (941) 361-4805.

Last modified: March 22, 2013
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published without permissions. Links are encouraged.